Interconnected Mini Links

What social software takes as axiomatic, and the paradigm cycle

that when people get together they start to create social capital (okay, just do each other favours), and they like to work few-to-few.

Slices of the social software conversation, and trying for a definition

"Try and ground all of this; try and explain social software to someone who has a background in evolutionary psychology/ dynamics of group decisions, and it's very hard (as discovered a few nights ago). What's the objective? So I'll ramble:"

http://www.sylloge.com/personal/2003_03_01_s.html#91273866 -- the elements of social software, still useful

Group activity as push or pull

"Pull is undirected or atelic. Think about how evolution works, or an idle conversation. Push on the other hand is a goal-oriented, industrial process. It's directed or telic."

Social rhetoric

"Just as rhetoric presents a methodology for telic conversation (conversation abstracted to be directed), social rhetoric can present a methodology for telic community or teams (a group abstracted to be directed). Social rhetoric has the properties of being available for anyone to use; able to operate within a restricted environment; of being able to handle ambiguities, exceptions, and what happens when individuals operate in a way that isn't immediately handled by the rules (so instead of rules it's a network of incentive fields). Now deriving social rhetoric is the hard part. I have three suggestions."

Thoughts on the Work Foundation's Social Software Seminar

"what properties do successful technologies have that we can harness and steer to not just communities but directed groups? Second. In the main the new media have only be used for one-to-one and one-to-many, and even the www has just democratised broadcast -- but the capability is there for many-to-many communication; how is this to be done?"

http://interconnected.org/notes/2002/11/Social_Software_seminar.txt -- notes